The Furnace

reaching the boiling point

Thursday, September 20, 2007

Ben Warren's "Trilogy of Terror"

This weekend we (and we being the operative word here) shot three music videos over four days for my friend Ben Warren. This was my first foray into producing and directing a video production for several years, so it was an interesting ride to say the least. Even so, I found myself enjoying the feeling of working on set and this was largely due to the support everyone lent to the process. Brian "Bowls" Maclean flew out to NY from St. Louis for the weekend to lend his hand and DVX100B camera to the production - both his camera and on-set help were key to us pulling the whole thing off. My girl, Jen Rock, agreed early on to help out with make-up for the dead girls (in addition to wanting to play one) in the "Broken Girl" video, which was key to inspiring the production. Ben's girlfriend Gina was a good sport in agreeing to be the "garbage girl" and all around support system. She even came out to Greenpoint at 4:30 after a tiring day at work so we could get a crucial shot of a woman's feet walking in high heels - Woohoo! Columbia College alumni Hilda Karadsheh offered her afternoon, even though she felt ill, to help us pull off our first day of shooting. The acting team included Ben's mother Jeannette Warren, who was good-humored and patient through her day of shooting, Chris Farmer (a friend I met when I picked up Ebby & Bun - he was their previous owner), Laura Baron (an actress I found on myspace who was a genuine delight to work with), Wojtek Zablockei (a Polish friend from Greenpoint who is an aspiring actor) and Gina's friend Jane (who selflessly agreed to be another "victim" at the last minute) all get major kudos for coming through and giving their time and energy to the project.

And of course, to Ben Warren, without whom none of this would have been possible.

Here's a sneak peak behind the scenes of Ben Warren's "Trilogy of Terror" as we shoot a scene from "Like You Do."

Monday, September 10, 2007

In preparation of this weekend's upcoming video shoot, I'm posting this video I did with Ben back in 2004. I believe the motivation, at the time, was to take advantage of my friend Bryan's amazing roof view overlooking midtown and to give life to a monologue that Ben wrote but never actually performed onstage (in hindsight, that doesn't seem like such a bad decision). It was all shot over several hours in one afternoon, but the editing dragged on for months afterwards as I tweaked the performance and sound design. All in all, I was happy with the result... I posted it on the website Triggerstreet to get some feedback and got the "brilliant!" and "unwatchable!" and "pointless!" sorts of reactions that tell you it was something special. And then some douchebag registered a complaint with the website for my "illegal" use of Bach's Air on G String and they took it down... UNTIL NOW!

And yes, as previously mentioned, Bowls MacLean is coming into town to help us shoot three music videos this weekend. It's going to be quite a production as Jen has offered to both do make-up effects and play a corpse! Will keep you posted with updates, if not during, then immediately afterwards.